For Most Users, Bitcoin is Not That Great
How user experience impacts adoption
The below are excerpts from a talk I gave at Scaling Bitcoin, a bitcoin development conference, in Milan. My comments sparked a lively discussion about the role of the user in the bitcoin ecosystem, and I wanted to create a summary below so more people could contribute to the conversation.
Has bitcoin reached the mass adoption in its target market?
I think bitcoin has reached the majority of the total possible market in its current form. Bitcoin as it exists today serves a very narrow purpose and appeals to a small group of individuals including speculators / opportunists, technologists, the intellectually curious, as well as a subset of users who need uncensored forms on money for a variety of purposes.
The bitcoin network was built from a limited whitepaper specification into a global network, the developer community made it better and more resilient, and then businesses made it easier to buy and sell bitcoin. However, the technical feature set of bitcoin is still limited, and there aren’t many new users who will adopt bitcoin in its current state.
Targeting new markets by developing new use cases will allow bitcoin to reach a larger end market. This may require new technical features on the core protocol, or it may be accomplished by building better applications on top of bitcoin.
My hypothesis? In order for bitcoin to grow, we need more elegant, more efficient products and far better user experiences, whether the user is a consumer, an institution using bitcoin, or a company building an application on top of the bitcoin protocol.
Why it matters
Compared to using venmo, or a bank, or an internet app on your phone. Bitcoin is not that great. It’s really hard to adopt bitcoin because it’s not inherently user-friendly. Not just for consumers and enterprises, but also for developers who are trying to build new products with it.
